Thursday, 11 April 2013

3D Printing with Nylon 618 filament in Tie-Dye colours

Taluman Nylon 618 is a very versatile printing material. Nylon does not require a heated bed, has low warp, and cooling fans are not required for both big or tiny printing.

You can print big and really tiny things in Nylon

No fans or heated beds required!

Nylon has amazing self-bonding properties making any FFF (layer-by-layer) printed objects very
strong and less prone to de-lamination.

Natural Nylon 618 material.

Another aspect of its development was
the ability to colour the Nylon with fabric Dye. That hits almost every spot for me!

From the moment I spotted the 618 Nylon was available I
wanted to try colouring the raw filament with more than one colour, something I
have always wanted manufacturers to make is a range of filaments that have
changes of colour during the roll or even across the roll, now I had a way to
do it myself.

Taulman 3D recommends printing with the natural filament and
then dyeing the parts afterwards for best results, but I wanted to see what
happened when dyeing the filament first as that sounded a lot more fun.

Nylon 618 Intro video-

Here is an introduction video going over the simple Filament Dyeing process, You can also watch it in HD on YouTube Here -

I wanted as simple method as possible to dye the filament
rolls, nothing too messy or complicated, so obviously I ignored the instructions...

I used powder based Rit dye, this is compatible with Nylon,
if you try anything else, do make sure it's suitable, some Dye's state they are
not, and some (Dylon for example) don't seem to give any real advice on Nylon.
Other specific acid based dyes are designed for Nylon, but getting hold of them is not
all that easy in the UK, seems a little easier in the US.

The Rit Dye website recommends adding Vinegar when trying to
dye Nylon, I can say that really didn't work for me, and seemed to make the dye
almost useless. I’m not sure why it didn't help as the acid content of Vinegar
or other things like citric acid are often used when dying Nylon based
products.

You can use other natural dyes for Nylon, Cotchineal
(squashed bugs) makes a very strong red dye, Turmeric and tea also work on
Nylon.

Other links suggest adding add extra Salt to the Dye, this
does not seem to hinder the dyeing process, but it's hard to say if it also
helped with my particular setup as I only did it with one colour and that was an already dark shade.

After ignoring the instructions for the dye and most other information I could find, I just boiled a
kettle of water, and added around 200ml to the Rit Dye sachet in a glass Jam
jar – stirred for 1 minute until dissolved.

It's a good idea to tie-wrap or secure the filament into a
coil before dyeing. Also you want to drop the filament into hot (boiling if
possible) water before putting it into the dissolved dye. Just for a few
minutes to get it up to temperature.

Here is a before and after shot.

Note - the Nylon based tie-wraps also dye really well!

This is how it's done -

Then I just put the hot filament into a Zip-top bag and
poured in the 200ml of dye, as you can see I wanted just half or less of the
coil to be covered in the bag (depending on bag size).

Leave it for 30mins and shake/swish it about in the bag once
or twice if you remember.

You can leave it for longer, but 30mins seems to be a good
time to get a nice colour from this extra concentrated dye.

After 30mins or longer, you can remove the coil, and rinse in warm water, then cold water.

The one I added vinegar too was unfortunately the magenta
(pink/fuchsia) so that really didn't work at all well, and ended up being more
like a light pink/orange for some reason – I'll try again without the vinegar
next time.

The yellow was done just with the Dye, this worked really
well and was very fast acting and seems to give the strongest colour when
printed.

For the Teal (dark green) I tried adding salt, this didn't
seem to help and maybe needed longer to get a deep colour, hard to tell, but
next time I use Rit dye it's going to be just plain.

Basically I would warn against adding Vinegar or salt and
try to keep the dye as hot as possible for as long as possible.

You could do a whole coil if you lay it down in a zip bag or
boil it up in a pan, or if like me you want a mixed filament 'tartan look' ;)
rotate the filament in the bag and add another colour. Dye the next section
like above, rinse and repeat.

Starting to look rather awesome don't you think?

In the end you should have tie-dye filament! you then need
to dry out really well before use.

I'm sure you could wrap and bind the filament in all sorts
of ways with rubber bands or plastic to get some really interesting and
colourful effects.

I did think about drying it in an oven, I have done this
before with ABS and PLA, this should also work well for Nylon, but as I was
going away for a week I decided to leave the coils in an airing cupboard at a
slightly elevated temperature, this worked extremely well and all of my spare
ABS is stored in this cupboard permanently to keep out any moisture.

Another trick mentioned on the RepRap forums (by Sublime) is to put your
filament in a metal of wooden box with a low wattage light bulb (~25w) to keep
it dry. You can of course use desiccant sachets, but remember these really only
do absorb a tiny amount of moisture and need to be dried themselves for re-use.

Printing with the filament is just as normal, I didn't see
any issues at all with it. No steam or pops as the filament was really dry,
actually better than when it had been originally delivered.

Layer bonding seems as strong as with natural Nylon, the
only change I decided to make was to increase the temperature of the print to
235 degrees C.

And one final note, if you plan to use Nylon for printing, MakeAlot directed me that the best surface material to print on is Tufnol (Whale brand) this cotton weave, resin based laminate is often used for mechanical jigs in the electronics or test area. You need to get the Whale brand type and not other similar products based on fiberglass or composites.

This is what the Tufnol (Whale brand) surface looks like.

It will go by different names over in the US (often Garolite LE) and may have other names where you are.

Tie Dye Printing and Destruction testing Nylon 618 video-

Here is a video showing the printing of Nylon on Tantilus and Rostock, I also do a little destruction testing at the end, showing the relative strength against PLA - You can also watch it in HD on YouTube Here -

After initial testing I had been lowering the print
temperature of the natural Nylon down to 225, but I noticed the dark Teal
colour looked shinier and smooth at a little higher temperature, so 235 Deg C
is my now normal setting for Nylon @60mm/sec printing speed using a 0.4mm J-head
nozzle.

Blended Natural and Teal bands add another dimension to the Tron and Plus Vases

Cutting the filament cross section shows that the dye
penetrates in about 85%, so you have a tiny core of natural looking filament,
this obviously all gets melted together in the extruder nozzle but it’s
interesting that the colours do not seem to really fade in the extruding process
as I thought it might, you do end up with nice and unique looking parts,
especially when the filament is cross multi-coloured.

I expect that doing a better dyeing process, having more
agitation and constant high heat would dye the entire filament and produce even
stronger colours.

I was originally trying to get a mix of Cyan, Magenta and
Yellow filament, and where these colours mixed should have also given me Red, Green
and Blue. But I could only get hold of Teal (dark green) instead of Cyan and I
also didn't allow the coils to mix enough as I rotated them for each of the
coloured dips.

I like this method as after you have dyed your coil there is
nothing else to do, where as dyeing the parts after printing would be a pain
each time you made a printed object, so I'm please how the first test came out
and will dye more Nylon Filament with some other colours next time.

I have printed all these models using both the Tantillus printer
as this was setup for 1.75mm Filament and also the Rostock for bigger models, both with cold Tufnol print surfaces.

Printing bigger Nylon prints
on the Rostock also seems to work extremely well, I have only done a few so far, but the Rostock seems very happy with Nylon too.

And they stay very stretchy, the dye does not seem to make any difference to layer bonding or stretch.

Let me know what you think and send me some pictures if you
try out any Tie-Dye printing!

I bought 3 rolls of the Taulman 618 filament, and dyed a lot of it, all sorts of different colour mixes, many I have not yet had time to try out, and it does go a very long way when printing hollow pots!

Plenty more great things to print out that deserve the Tye-Dye treatment, let me know what you would like to see Tye-Dye 3D printed and I'll do my best.

Very excitinglyas I typed this up, Taulman3D has just announced a new clear Nylon 645 material with very high strength properties, I can't wait to try it out. I can imagine dyeing this new clear material would look rather fantastic when printed.

In other 3D news -
E3D All metal hot-end -

I just received a new all metal hot-end from e3d-Online, it's one of the best machined objects I have ever received. And this really is an all metal hot-end, no PTFE inserts or sealing tape, just a stainless thermal junction and Aluminium heater block and heat-sink.
If it operates as good as it looks, we should have another option for really high temperature printing.

It's not as heavy as it looks :) it has a J-head compatible Groove mount that fits perfectly into Greg style extruders and all the modified Bowden hot-end mounts I have made so far.

I plan to test it with Nylon, Polycarbonate, PLA, ABS and PC-ABS and any other materials I can get my hands on very soon.
I may need to change the thermistor over to a thermocouple for some materials, but I will let you all know how it performs.

3D Printing Presentation in Cheltenham -

Also, I will be speaking about RepRap and 3D printing along with demo's at the Cheltenham design festival - April 13th, do come along if you can and say hello.

Hi Brad, Thanks - the Tantillus loves Nylon printing, Have you tried any yet?I also think after 3 months of major printing I have almost worn out my bearings and rods, I know I should not have used LM8UU's, I'm going to switch to Nylon Bushings and new rods soon.

Not yet, I planned on ordering a bunch of it and then things got busy becoming a dad and moving which has put a real hamper on my RepRapping time. Glad to see you are putting lots of time on your Tantillus it will be interesting to see what your thoughts on it are. Not many hardcore RepRappers have built them to my knowledge. After reading your post on the Rostock I am going to build a really small one with as much printable as possible including printable linear rails and bearings (started on that part yesterday).

With the nylon being so soft do you think it will work well for bushings?

Hi Rich,Tremendous work, both in this post and the previous one. There's nothing like kicking off a print (on my own printer) and settling in to watch a RichRap video, and read one of your blog update :-) I always look forward to reading your latest exploits.

Quick Q: Once you dye the filament and rinse off how are you drying it?Not needing a heated bed is a nice advantage. Is there any sign of residue on the bed surface after repeated use, and if so does the bed need any preparation or scraping clean before printing again?Can you give some rough guide to print speed vs extruder temperatures, based on your experimenting?Thanks!Ivor

Thanks again, the drying issue was worrying me to start with, but the first method I tried worked perfectly - just shake off the water and put it in the Airing cupboard where my boiler is for 48 hours, it came out drier than when it was first delivered, I put all of it in there after that, then in Zip bags to keep it fresh!

If you get the bed height wrong, it will bond so well that the surface of the Tufnol rips apart!

When you get it right, it un-sticks with a little force and leaves no residue, I did end up scraping it down every 5 or 6 prints just to be sure.

You wrote that you use Blue tape to print small parts of Nylon. The issue is that tape un-sticks from bed together with part. The also surface of part that contacted tape is dirty in tape. What are other printing conditions while you use Blue tape? Heat bed? Bed material?I tried cold bed and 40C bed covered by Blue tape. Bed is made of 1.5mm steel. Tape goes off from the bed together with parts all the time.

An Other Great post! thank's I am planing my Build for a Delta Rostock printer, and I am planing on using the E3d hot-end I just Redraw everything in Solidwork (I have access to a good numeric Late and plan to make a mutch as i can myself)

Let us know about your result using it! All metal realy apeal to me!I am planing to use the extruder you used and Makerslide for the motion coupled whit Gt2 Belt.

I am Looking for using Igus rod-end and carbon fiber tube for effector.

Does Nylon 618 give off any fumes when printing? I've almost exclusively used PLA, since the one time I tried ABS I started getting a headache. I decided to build a fume hood of some sort before I tried it again and haven't had time to do that.

Nylon would be great, but I'm worried about melting different types of plastic, since I have very limited knowledge in this area.

Hi Daniel, I also use PLA most of the time, and ABS makes me feel ill after a while, I don't print with ABS in the house. I doubt I use more than 3Kg of ABS a year as I just don't like using it.

I had no ill effects with Nylon printing, and didn't experience any types of noticeable fumes, I have used about 1.2Kg so far.

When I first printed it had some moisture in it, some pops and puffs of steam can be seen during printing, but after a dry out in the airing cupboard this totally disappears, this drying really improves the print quality a lot, especially the outer surface, I have a before and after picture I'll try to post up.

I'm no materials expert either, but I'm printing with it in the same way as I use PLA, just slightly higher temperature. And it's not a problem for me and much nicer to use than any ABS I have ever had to print with.

Woods do seem to work, and tapes, but Tufnol is the best I have used so far, it actually sticks a little too well for really big parts.

I have tried 1mm thick and that was fine for smaller parts (50mm and smaller)

2mm was also good, but I had some twisting when printing really big parts as it was not clamped down.2mm also allows you to flex it to help remove the part, where as 3mm is a little too stiff to flex, but allows bit printing without flexing, you will need to use a blade or lever to help get it off the surface.

Very informative and trustworthy blog. Please keep updating with great posts like this one. I have booked marked your site and am about to email it to a few friends of mine that I know would enjoy readingprinters perth

Hey Rich, just a note that the Tufnol that you mention seems to be a company name. At least here in the U.S. the board you used is called phenolic and is a type of resin coated paper or cloth built up in layers of different thickness. It it usable in fairly high temperatures and is often used in the place of plastics where heat would deform the plastic.

I just ordered the 2 different Nylons you mentioned to try out. Can't wait.

Have you ever had an issue with the nylon blocking the nozzle after leaving it in there after a print is completed? Just want to know should i remove the nylon filament before turning the printer off for the night.

I finished consider drying it in a broiler, I have completed this before with ABS and PLA, this might as well likewise work well for Nylon, however as I was going without end for a week I chose to leave the curls in an airing organizer at a marginally hoisted temperature.

I go through your website it’s very good and having good information about the sealing machine, and we are also having similar website you can visit us. If you want to know more about the sealing machine.

I go through your website it’s very good and having good information about the sealing machine, and we are also having similar website you can visit us. If you want to know more about the sealing machine.

I read your blog. its very nice. you have very good content. My web log square measure terribly spectacular to every alternative.You scan my web log its excellent and friendly, facilitate full for all.

Dear Richard,Your nylon printing suggestions in this post are really useful and very pleasant to read.I am wonder if you can allow the translation of a part of the article into Italian, to be published on my blog (www.sharemind.eu/wordpress), of course specifying your credits.Many thanks in advance,Pietro Meloni

Dear Richard,I'm very impressed with your Nylon printing article. I've been looking for someone who might be able to print a model for me in Nylon, but I can't find anyone offering this as a service yet. Any chance you know someone?

Would it also be possible to dye rubber-like filaments like this: http://www.3d2print.net/shop/product/rubber-blue-1-75mm? I want to try something on this kind of material. I’m just afraid though; does dye affect the flexibility of the rubber-like filament I’m going to use? Or does it make any difference to its layer bonding?

When it comes to fine printout and toughness feature, you can never really go wrong with Taulman 618 Nylon. It’s actually one of my favorite materials for printing large scale items because of its ability to print the finest details. It’s a great alternative for any standard filament.

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That looks amazing! I think I would use that technique next time. For now, I'm still into solid-colored ABS filaments from http://www.3d2print.net/shop/3d-printer-filament/abs-filament/. But maybe I can do that with the transparent ones when I got tired of the solid hues.

Very creative idea i really appreciate and thumbs up for you keep it up i was looking for Toner Cartridge for Printers i have HP printer it is branded machine and also it is high productive high yield printer.

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